Hooking Up With Three Dog Night

January 31, 1986|By Tom Popson.

Let`s assume you are the road manager of a rock `n` roll band that`s on tour. Six hours ago your boys finished a concert. It is now 4 a.m., you are back at your hotel and you need to talk to one of the band members. Where are you most likely to find this fellow:

(a) Writing ``Hugs and Kisses to Me`` in eyeliner on the walls of his room.

(b) Trashing a pop machine.

(c) Fishing.

Well, it all depends. If the pop performer in question is Cory Wells

--vocalist for Three Dog Night and writer for Outdoor Life magazine--the answer might very well be (c). An avid angler, Wells has managed through the years to both fish and write about fishing while on the road with Three Dog Night.

Started in 1968, Three Dog Night quickly became a big success, scoring 18 consecutive Top 20 hits--among them ``Joy to the World,`` ``Mama Told Me Not to Come`` and ``Black and White``--before disbanding in 1975. The group reunited in 1980 and has been active since. (They play P.J. Flaherty`s Saturday.)

All along the way, Cory Wells has been dipping hooks in the water.

``There`s a lot of time on the road,`` Wells says. ``I was actually fishing while I was out there on the road. While everybody else was partying, I was getting up at 4 in the morning and going fishing when we toured through places like Florida, the South, back East, up in Canada.

``Through all of the Three Dog Night days, I was doing a lot of writing for outdoor magazines, several fishing magazines. I wrote everything under my own name, but most people didn`t put the name together with Three Dog Night. The articles were just about places and fishing techniques and what to expect. ``Right after we broke up, that`s what I did constantly. Then I did some work for some tackle companies and really got involved in the fishing thing. A long time ago I told myself I would never work at anything I didn`t enjoy. Music and fishing happened to be the two things I really loved.``

Going after trout and bass, Wells says, was also a release that enabled him to get away from some constraining aspects of the pop-music business.

``At first, it was all exciting and a lot of fun,`` Wells says, recalling the early days of Three Dog Night. ``But after a while reality set in--I guess in the second year or so. We found out it wasn`t all fun and that the people who were controlling us were definitely controlling us. We had, really, no social life. We were working constantly. We weren`t making any decisions about our career. People were making them for us.

``It wasn`t fun after a while. And the rigors of the road caught up with everybody. It was not a good thing after the third year. I mean, we were still enjoying making music--but you really have to love this to continue on, because all the other factors that get involved are enough to discourage you.``

Wells and the other two principals in Three Dog Night--Danny Hutton and Chuck Negron--eventually disbanded the group in 1975. Immediately after the group`s break-up, Wells immersed himself in fishing and writing, at one point field-testing rods for a company. About two years later, though, a manager convinced him he should record a solo album. Wells recorded two albums for A& M. One was released in 1978, and the other is ``still in the can.``

Two years after that, Wells, Hutton and Negron got together again, a reunion prompted partly by feelings of malaise and partly by someone else`s attempts to steal the Three Dog Night name.

``As Danny said, he needed a purpose in life,`` Wells says. ``He wanted to get up in the morning and know he was going to do something. He had started getting involved again, checking on songs and so on. In the meantime, I had come across some people who were trying to put together a bogus Three Dog Night. They must have thought we had all died or something. I called Danny--I hadn`t talked to him in five years--and I asked him if he had heard of this group.

``We followed up on it and made them discard that idea. But then Danny and I started thinking about it. We both were being approached by people in the industry saying, `You guys should go back together.`

``So finally we said, `Let`s do it, but let`s do it in a three-phase deal. We`ll get together and have a rehearsal. If everything sounds good and we still like it, we`ll go to Step 2: We`ll find a manager we trust and see if there`s a genuine appeal for the audience out there. If that all works out, then we`ll look into an album.`

``So we recorded an album called `It`s a Jungle.` But we decided to `play record company,` which was a mistake. We had our own label, and unfortunately we went to bed with the wrong distributor. He couldn`t get the product to the people. When we got into a town, we`d go to record stores and browse and see if the record was in the rack, and it never was.

``We toured pretty extensively up to about `84. In `85, we didn`t tour hardly at all. We had some illnesses in the band. This year we`re gearing up to do more work.``

There are, notes Wells, some differences for Three Dog Night this time out.

``We`re not making $30,000 and $40,000 a night anymore,`` he says. ``And it`s a different way of touring. The economy is different now than it was in 1972. The form of travel has changed. We don`t fly everywhere by jet anymore. ``But what`s great about it is the fact that we do it at our own pace. We make the decisions, we say where we want to go.

``You have to put it all in perspective. People know we don`t have a hit record now. Who`s hot is hot, who`s not is not. Everybody takes turns in this business. You struggle and you make it big, and then you don`t make it big and go back down to where you were. Everybody`s just kind of trading places all the time.``